Essential Workers Deserve Hazard Pay And More
By Percy Lujan
I was loading in materials into the company van when I heard it. It was 7 p.m. in the middle of a Manhattan NYCHA building when hundreds of residents came out to their windows to clank their pots and pans in recognition of the hundreds of thousands of essential workers running NYC's key industries. It was very moving to be recognized for the efforts and sacrifices we lend to the city.
I am a union laborer working in the asbestos and hazmat industry. During this pandemic, we've been responding to the threat by sanitizing worksites and offices, and doing essential abatement in hospitals and other locations. Thanks to our union contract we are well equipped and trained against many environmental hazards related to our occupation.
But the demands and work process leaves a lot of avenues through which the virus can infect a laborer. Like us, few essential workers will find it possible to keep six feet away from their coworkers. Few will find it possible or efficient to wash one's hands as often as it is advised. Few will find it difficult not to touch potentially contaminated surfaces.
The media and politicians will herald us essential workers as heroes for exposing ourselves to this danger. It is a drastic change of tone from years of downplaying the demands of workers for better wages and unionization. The "low skilled" workers of old (restaurant workers, cleaners, supermarket personnel, laborers,etc) are the essential workers of today. Workers whose jobs are so important that society would fall apart if they stopped coming to their posts, and yet receive little consideration and celebration in the public discourse.
As the virus ravages through our communities, powerful business interests are putting pressure on state governments to reopen the economy. The MAGA base has come to their aid by mounting dangerous demonstrations on their behalf. They want the entire US workforce back to work; perhaps because some are facing hardship, or maybe just because they want to get haircuts, have brunches, golf, go to amusement parks, watch movies, etc. In reality, the real beneficiaries would be factory owners, big retail chains, big restaurants, construction bosses and their cronies in real state who would see their profits soar regardless of the death toll.
Recently, New York State proposed a 50 percent hazard pay increase to essential workers during this pandemic. This is a long overdue recognition for putting our health in danger, but it does speak volumes of the moment the workers of this city and the whole US are living in. When previously the city and state dragged their feet when it came to addressing the needs of workers, now they are trying to make canals to divert the flood that's coming.
As corporate profits soared in the last fifty years, wages have remained stagnant while the cost of rent, transportation, food, and even higher education have dramatically increased. While the billionaires move their money from the safety of their condominiums and mansions, we continue getting up everyday and risking our health to safeguard their investment. It is our labor that keeps their businesses afloat during the pandemic.
For years, we have demanded increases in the minimum wage, recognition of worker's right to organize, prevailing wage for workers of publicly funded projects, better immigration laws that lift millions of immigrant workers from the shadows, and more. We workers hold society together in times of crisis. In order to win these demands, it has to be us who rule society at all times.
I hope when this pandemic passes, those pots and pans from balconies become boots and banners in the streets. When this pandemic passes, we essential workers will come back for the recognition that is due to us. Recognition in the form of union representation. Recognition in the form of a fair immigration reform. Recognition in the form of infrastructure development and prevailing wage jobs. Recognition in the form of real affordable housing for our families. Recognition in the form of universal healthcare for every single worker in the U.S.
I want more value for my labor. I don't want the risks I am taking today to be paid with empty thank yous without a real change in the form of more power to the working class.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to realize how really strong we are. It follows that it takes struggle to realize how much we can win. The current is building. The pressure is mounting. We just need the flood to run its course.
